


422. runaway

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [119]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8393083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: They’ve been driving for hours. Sioux Falls, that’s where they’re headed. Sarah looked it up on her phone: it’s a town in South Dakota somewhere. That’s fine. No one will be looking for her there, and that’s what matters.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [207\. midnight hitchhiking](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285975) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09). 



> [warning: abuse mention]
> 
> Continuation of the linked drabble.

Outside the windows of the truck the sun is starting to rise. Sarah has to turn around in her seat to see it actually rising behind them in the east, but out every window the sky is turning grey and then pink at the edges. They’ve been driving for hours. Sioux Falls, that’s where they’re headed. Sarah looked it up on her phone: it’s a town in South Dakota somewhere. That’s fine. No one will be looking for her there, and that’s what matters.

She stops craning her neck to stare into the sun and turns back, blinks sunspots off her eyes. Next to her Helena – that’s what her name was, right, Helena? – is driving with the calm efficiency of a machine. Sarah knows nothing about her. She’s Eastern European, and this isn’t her truck, and she’s driving to Sioux-Falls-South-Dakota, and she can eat enough for four people in one sitting. That’s not a lot to know about a person, considering how long they’ve been driving.

Sarah looks back out the window. Grass rolls by. She desperately wants something to fill the silence, but she knows how these things work: if you ask something, you have to let someone ask something about you. And Sarah has nothing she wants to say, not to this stranger. She fidgets. Part of her wants Helena to do something, to push her, so Sarah has no choice but to push back. She wants Helena to ask about the bruise on her face, but: Helena has been the kindest, out of anyone who has ever seen that bruise. It’s like she hasn’t even noticed it.

Fuck it.

“Why are you going to Sioux Falls,” Sarah says, her voice a weird over-loud rasp in the pre-dawn light. Next to her Helena jumps; they waver a little on the road. “Shit,” Sarah says. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Helena says. “I was…” she lifts one hand off the wheel and waves it around vaguely. Puts it back. Ten and two.

“I have a friend,” she continues. “His name is Jesse.” For some indefinable reason she pronounces this _yes-see_ , but Sarah doesn’t ask. “He is a tow-truck driver. I am going to bring his truck back to him and then stay with him for a little while. Too much smog, in the city. Very loud. Not fun.”

Sarah scoffs despite herself. There’s a seam loose on the seat and she starts picking at it; she addresses her words to the loose thread. “City’s the only thing that makes sense,” she says. “Too bloody quiet in the country. Lose your mind out there.”

“Eh,” Helena says. “I think I will keep my mind where it is. Hard to lose it that way, I think.”

“You sound like a bloody fortune cookie.”

“What is a fortune cookie.”

Sarah looks up, but Helena hasn’t taken her eyes off the road. She seems genuinely curious.

“It’s that – Chinese shit,” Sarah says slowly. “Y’know, when you order shitty takeout and you get a cookie with the, I dunno, _today you will experience a change in fortune, your lucky number is 12_ shite. You seriously never had one?”

“No,” Helena says. “I do not think they will have this in Sioux Falls. Maybe someday.”

Sarah’s leg starts bouncing on the floor of the truck. Helena’s easy calm with the idea of going some place with no Chinese food makes Sarah want to choke her. “My boyfriend and I used to get ‘em,” she says, like a challenge. “It was really shitty Chinese food, though, that was all we could afford.” There. _Push_ , Helena.

But she doesn’t. “Shitty like getting shits?” Helena says. “Or shitty like bad tastes.”

“Second one,” Sarah says. “He hit me.”

The car is silent after that sudden gunshot of a confession. Helena reaches up a finger and solemnly taps her cheekbone. Sarah lets out a long, twisting sigh that may as well be a signed confession. Helena nods, puts her hand back on the wheel.

“I had this also, once,” she says quietly. “It will pass. Better, once you get far away.”

And now Sarah feels like shit, because here is Helena still perfectly Zen about all of this and here is Sarah ripping this seat apart with her fingernails just for the sake of ruining it. She looks back down at her twisting fingers. She’s managed to pull the seat open; she teases out a chunk of white fluff, sends it twisting to the floor.

“Sioux Falls,” she says. “’bout as far away as you can get.”

“It’s nice,” Helena says. “There are parks.”

“Great,” Sarah says, and stares out the window. The sun is almost all the way up. The sunrise is beautiful. Sarah hates it. She wishes she could pull them back to the start of this journey, back into the dark. She wishes she could just rewind the two of them all the way, to before their cheekbones learned how to bruise. She would have liked Helena then, she thinks. Back when she was easier to love.

“If you need a place to stay,” Helena says, voice small and hesitant.

Sarah pulls her legs onto the seat and hugs them to her body. She can’t quite bring herself to answer, or to look at Helena, or to do anything that isn’t staring fiercely out the window like she can will the sun to rise herself. Helena doesn’t say anything either. She doesn’t make a sound; she just keeps her hands on the wheel and her feet on the pedals and drives them further and further away from the rising sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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